Fall on Your Knees by Ann-marie MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

serviceable clapboard dwellings attached in pairs. There was a school, a Catholic church, Luvovitz’s Kosher Canadian Butcher Shop and Delikatessen, MacIsaac’s Drugs and Confectionery and the Company Store with enough merchandise to mephistophelize a miner’s wife.
    Every Friday night the miners would hand over their sealed pay packets to their wives, who’d open them and fork over the price of a drink. Problem was, come Saturday shopping the pay packet — with or without Friday’s tipple — would barely feed even a small family of six. But the coal company had a solution to this: “company scrip”. This was a form of credit. The missus could spend cash at those shops in town that stocked the odd item unavailable at the Company Store. And she could spend company scrip at the Company Store on food, shoes, cloth and kerosene. Her man’s sealed pay packet grew thinner and thinner, until quite soon it contained only an itemized account of how much rent he owed on his company house, how much interest he owed on his debt to the Company Store and how much was still available to him in scrip to spend there. The Company Store came to be better known as “The Pluck-Me Store”.
    Still people poured in, filling up the streets that ran north-south, and the avenues that ran east-west, every second one named for a Catholic saint or a coal company magnate. Boom Town. It didn’t exist officially and it had no name yet, but the Piper house was suddenly on a street and the street had a name: Water Street.
    Materia hadn’t been in a church since she’d got married. Now that there was a Catholic church right handy there was no reason she couldn’t just walk over. But she felt unworthy. Our Lady had not answered her prayer. Materia still did not love her child, and she knew the fault lay within herself,
    “Kathleen, taa’i la hown.”
    Materia sat the child on her lap and wrapped her arms around it. She sang, unrepeatable and undulating:
    “Kahn aa’ndi aa’sfoor
    zarif u ghandoor
    rasu aHmar, shaa’ru asfar
    bas aa’yunu sood
    sood metlel leyl …. ”
    Materia rocked the child and felt sad — was that closer to love? She hoped. The child felt cool in her arms. “I’ll warm you,” she thought. And kept singing. Kathleen stayed perfectly still, pressed close up against the rolling mass. Materia stroked the fire-gold hair and passed a warm brown hand across the staring green eyes. Kathleen tried not to breathe. Tried not to understand the song. She tried to think of Daddy and light things — fresh air, and green grass — she worried that Daddy would know. And be hurt. There was a smell.
    Materia released the child. It was no good. God could see past Materia’s actions, into her heart. And her heart was empty.
    Materia no longer went up to the hope chest to cry — she cried wherever she happened to be at the time — nor did it any longer interrupt her work or wrench a single muscle in her face.
    “Give us a jawbreaker and a couple of honeymoons,” said James.
    MacIsaac’s Drugs and Confectionery smelt of new pine, bitter herbs and salt-water taffy. Mr MacIsaac reached into a tilted jar brimming with the edible rainbow. Behind him stretched shelf upon shelf of bottles and packets containing powders, essences, oils and unguents. Whatever ails you.
    Mr MacIssac handed Kathleen a sarsaparilla candy cane as an extra little treat, but she hesitated and looked at James, who said, “It’s all right, my darling, Mr MacIsaac’s not a stranger.”
    Mr MacIsaac looked at Kathleen gravely, lowered his head and said, “Go on, touch it.”
    She touched his billiard-bald head and grinned. Mr MacIsaac said, “I hear you got a set o’ lungs on you, lass.”
    She nodded wisely, sucking on the candy cane. MacIsaac laughed and James beamed. He and Kathleen left the shop together. Mrs MacIsaac said from her perch on the sliding ladder, “She’s beautiful.”
    “Yuh, she’s a pretty little thing.”
    “Too pretty. They’ll